Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

It’s different with raids, because dungeons never had an enrage timer. That’s what makes the entire situation different.

Could I beat a dungeon with an entire team of people in soldier’s gear? Sure I can. Because it doesn’t matter if I take longer. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.

I run a super casual guild and we run dungeons for years including Arah. When people were killing lupi in a minute, it took us ten. Didn’t matter. We could spend as much time as we wanted. We weren’t hurting anyone. We were having fun.

The enrage timer changes all that. You have to do more DPS so you have to have enough people with the right builds. It means vetting people in my guild. Telling them they have to play a different way.

You say it’s not different from dungeons, but it is, because it was possible to beat dungeons without changing builds. That’s not always the case for raids.

If enrage timers prevent people from completing bosses at their own pace, how is it that someone has soloed a raid boss (Cairn) and last I saw a Mesmer was getting close to soloing VG.

Yes enrage timers exist, however it doesn’t mean that the fight is a hard fail. Chances are if you are hitting the enrage timer, you are failing mechanics more than anything else.

Even if you do hit enrage, on most fights, so long as you are still able to handle the mechanics, you can still beat and pass the encounter.

Fatalyz.7168:

Vayne.8563:

It’s different with raids, because dungeons never had an enrage timer. That’s what makes the entire situation different.

Could I beat a dungeon with an entire team of people in soldier’s gear? Sure I can. Because it doesn’t matter if I take longer. It’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.

I run a super casual guild and we run dungeons for years including Arah. When people were killing lupi in a minute, it took us ten. Didn’t matter. We could spend as much time as we wanted. We weren’t hurting anyone. We were having fun.

The enrage timer changes all that. You have to do more DPS so you have to have enough people with the right builds. It means vetting people in my guild. Telling them they have to play a different way.

You say it’s not different from dungeons, but it is, because it was possible to beat dungeons without changing builds. That’s not always the case for raids.

If enrage timers prevent people from completing bosses at their own pace, how is it that someone has soloed a raid boss (Cairn) and last I saw a Mesmer was getting close to soloing VG.

Yes enrage timers exist, however it doesn’t mean that the fight is a hard fail. Chances are if you are hitting the enrage timer, you are failing mechanics more than anything else.

Even if you do hit enrage, on most fights, so long as you are still able to handle the mechanics, you can still beat and pass the encounter.

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

10 people that don’t do rotation should still do more dps than 1 person on a solo’ing build.

Enrage timers are irrelevant. The enrage itself is trivial and the checks required to not hit enrage are trivial.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Crinn.7864:

1) Time is a commodity is that is universally valued by all players. Nobody wants to spend any more time on a fight than is necessary. This is why zerker gear is the goto for open world players and not just raiders.

Rubbish. My time in the game is time I already gave up on. If I want to use it “efficiently” I wouldn’t be spending it on light entertainment. Time I spend on gaming only needs to meet 1 criterion for me to consider it well-spent: it needs to be time spent enjoying myself. Shaving seconds off of fights doesn’t even rank in what I find enjoyable.

Tell me, do you deliberately draw out mob fights? Or do you kill the mob asap and move on?

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

10 people that don’t do rotation should still do more dps than 1 person on a solo’ing build.

Enrage timers are irrelevant. The enrage itself is trivial and the checks required to not hit enrage are trivial.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

Vayne.8563:

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

10 people that don’t do rotation should still do more dps than 1 person on a solo’ing build.

Enrage timers are irrelevant. The enrage itself is trivial and the checks required to not hit enrage are trivial.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

I’m curious what the causes of failure were. Obviously I don’t expect you to remember, but curious none the less.

In most instances where you are hitting the enrage timer, it’s because of mechanic failures, not lack of dps, and the way to correct that is through practice. I’m not trying to push that it is easy, I’m admitting that it will take work and practice, but rather that it is possible, not in fact impossible.

Vayne.8563:

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

When my guild started doing raids, “raid night” consisted of wiping on VG for three hours. Now we have the wings on farm mode.

Your guild is going through progression, you wipe until you don’t and then you put it on farm and move on to the next boss.

Vayne.8563:

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

10 people that don’t do rotation should still do more dps than 1 person on a solo’ing build.

Enrage timers are irrelevant. The enrage itself is trivial and the checks required to not hit enrage are trivial.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

Vayne, I am right there with you. I am in a very casual guild also and most of the people there are older. We used to run dungeons just like your guild, we didn’t worry about time or gear.

When raids entered the game, I had a guild meeting and told everyone what would be excepted if they wanted to do this content. So out of the 75 people in the guild only about 15 to 20 were interested. From there we started talking about rotations and builds and everyone started making the changes.

We still haven’t beat VG. Some of the people have RL problems with being able to push buttons fast enough or to see the circles in time to dodge. So as much as people on hear are saying, some people won’t be able to handle the enrage once it pops.

Now we run escort every week, takes us about 15 mins to do it and then we try the other bosses. Still havne’t beaten one of them yet.

So Vayne, I totally understand where your coming from and as you can tell others in this thread don’t.

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

What do you mean “wouldn’t cut it”? Wouldn’t be able to do Fractals or Dungeons, or wouldn’t be accepted into a dedicated group? Because the former is patently false.

Djinn.9245:

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

What do you mean “wouldn’t cut it”? Wouldn’t be able to do Fractals or Dungeons, or wouldn’t be accepted into a dedicated group? Because the former is patently false.

I am right there with Djinn. My group runs dungeons and T4 fractals all the time. We accomplish them in a decent amount of time and have a lot of fun doing it. Those type of opinions are false and need to be kept to yourself.

Hjorje.9453:

Djinn.9245:

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

I disagree, completely. When you play with people who don’t even know what a rotation is, you don’t do nearly enough damage.

Also people that can’t do rotations wouldn’t cut it in fractals or dungeons.

What do you mean “wouldn’t cut it”? Wouldn’t be able to do Fractals or Dungeons, or wouldn’t be accepted into a dedicated group? Because the former is patently false.

I am right there with Djinn. My group runs dungeons and T4 fractals all the time. We accomplish them in a decent amount of time and have a lot of fun doing it. Those type of opinions are false and need to be kept to yourself.

Our casual guild has no problem with any dungeon and depending on the group, very little problems even with the most difficult fractals. Many of these people are decent players but they certainly don’t have rotations down. Even so, fractals and dungeons are not a problem.

So I am with Hjorje, Vayne, and Djinn. Knowing rotations is not a requirement for doing enough damage for fractals and dungeons. I would say knowing the content and how to deal with it is what is important.

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

I agree with you a hundred percent on this.

BUT the problem probably is exactly that. If most people are below average dps (and by that i mean measured on what you would need to smoothly kill the boss)
then everyone has to perfectly execute the mechanics. This can be difficult – but again thats the challange

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

OniGiri.9461:

Blaeys.3102:

In almost every case, the first thing “training” guilds do is push players toward meta builds – which is pretty much the opposite of the points we’re trying to make here. It’s about realistically (important word) opening the experience to more playstyles and builds.

This isnt about hard walls or extremes. It is about degrees and the point at which content is unnecessarily restrictive and creates a Stepford Wife syndrome in the game – one in which every player either plays to the mold or gets left behind.

This hung up about changing your gear and build because of raids seems so fake to me.

I’m a warrior main.
When i started doing dungeons back in the day i had to change my gear and playstyle to zerker so i could pull my weight in the encounter and be able to join more pug groups.

When i started doing fractals about 2,5 years ago i had to change my build and utilities to phalanx strength so i could be as usefull as possible in the encounter and be able to join more pug groups.

Its no different with raids. This is truely no argument for an identity change for guild wars 2.

Maybe the time has come to close this thread. We are at the point were its exclusively a thread complaining about “why i don’t like guild wars 2 raids”.

Raids, represent the biggest change to the identity of Guild Wars franchise. In the 12 years I’ve played Guild Wars from the original Guild Wars Prophecies, I have never bothered posting on forums and even then, this is the only thread I’ve ever bothered to commented on.

Raids, represent a shift away from the “casual philosophy” that existed all the way back from Guild Wars Prophecies. All easy (Normal Mode, Open World) and elite PvE content (Slavers Exile, UW, FoW, Fractals, Dungeons), in both GW1 and GW2 followed the spirit this philosophy, until Raids were introduced.

Fatalyz.7168:

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

We aren’t asking for anything to change. We enjoy the challenge and when we finally beat it then we accomplished something. As for target audience, raids are honestly built where I think 80% of the game population could accomplish it, if they wanted to. It will just require more work for some or having friends available that can pick up a little slack.

But we don’t want anything to change. I only brought this up because of how the conversation was going above talking about how if you can do fractals and dungeon then you should be able to do raids. I was pointing that it isn’t a good way to compare and people with limitations can accomplish dungeons and fractals pretty good where as the raids are more punishing.

You know, when the trailers for the Elite Specializations came out for HoT I was thinking, “What game is this?” I felt this way especially with Scrapper, confused at the introduction of the flying robots (Gyros). But after being exposed to it for a while, I feel like I kind of like the changes. Sure some things could have been implemented better or differently, but nothing is perfect; not you, not me, not this game.

Crinn.7864:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Crinn.7864:

1) Time is a commodity is that is universally valued by all players. Nobody wants to spend any more time on a fight than is necessary. This is why zerker gear is the goto for open world players and not just raiders.

Rubbish. My time in the game is time I already gave up on. If I want to use it “efficiently” I wouldn’t be spending it on light entertainment. Time I spend on gaming only needs to meet 1 criterion for me to consider it well-spent: it needs to be time spent enjoying myself. Shaving seconds off of fights doesn’t even rank in what I find enjoyable.

Tell me, do you deliberately draw out mob fights? Or do you kill the mob asap and move on?

What does that have to do with anything I said?

I have deliberately drawn out fights, to allow late comers to the battle time to get some hits in for credit.

Fatalyz.7168:

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

I wonder how much of an issue it is if time between raids increase, to be honest. As long as they consider how much content they put out for everyone. Because for some reason I feel that the longevity of raids is much better, also due to goals like legendary armor and time gating rewards to once a week.

While playing the living story episodes, those seem to be play once and maybe some minor repetition in the zone, explored it and then pretty much done. It doesn’t have that same longevity perhaps? I feel many players come to Raids as the only other thing to come to they haven’t played through at least once, expecting just a good time and maybe some repeating it for shinies. But it obviously might not be their thing

I think dungeons and fractals and raids are all separate things, comparing them is alright, but they have very different target audiences. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit less focus on raids, and more on slightly more accessible group content that is challenging but not so challenging that you need to practice and practice. (I mean, it is a game, alot of players just want to play leisurely not practice) Not that I don’t think current raiders deserve their challenges or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the player base is still waiting for challenging content that is suited for them. (It might be tricky to determine what is challenging for a bigger audience, I suppose)

Going on a tangent here, but in a way I guess fractals is sort of nice with different challenge tiers in that way. Though I wouldn’t mind if fractals as “small instances in the mists” started existing more as “small instances in Tyria” As for most people that might make a more interesting story. It would be setting up fractal-like instances up as 4 difficulty tiered mini raids outside of the mists, which could actually work as an extension of the fractals themselves. As a complete out of the blue concept ofcourse and It would mean it is less tied to fractals which then would receive less updates tied to the fractal hub in the mists and more tangible in Tyria rather than the Mists. So ehh I dunno.

FrizzFreston.5290:

I wonder how much of an issue it is if time between raids increase, to be honest. As long as they consider how much content they put out for everyone. Because for some reason I feel that the longevity of raids is much better, also due to goals like legendary armor and time gating rewards to once a week.

While playing the living story episodes, those seem to be play once and maybe some minor repetition in the zone, explored it and then pretty much done. It doesn’t have that same longevity perhaps? I feel many players come to Raids as the only other thing to come to they haven’t played through at least once, expecting just a good time and maybe some repeating it for shinies. But it obviously might not be their thing

I think dungeons and fractals and raids are all separate things, comparing them is alright, but they have very different target audiences. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit less focus on raids, and more on slightly more accessible group content that is challenging but not so challenging that you need to practice and practice. (I mean, it is a game, alot of players just want to play leisurely not practice) Not that I don’t think current raiders deserve their challenges or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the player base is still waiting for challenging content that is suited for them. (It might be tricky to determine what is challenging for a bigger audience, I suppose)

Going on a tangent here, but in a way I guess fractals is sort of nice with different challenge tiers in that way. Though I wouldn’t mind if fractals as “small instances in the mists” started existing more as “small instances in Tyria” As for most people that might make a more interesting story. It would be setting up fractal-like instances up as 4 difficulty tiered mini raids outside of the mists, which could actually work as an extension of the fractals themselves. As a complete out of the blue concept ofcourse and It would mean it is less tied to fractals which then would receive less updates tied to the fractal hub in the mists and more tangible in Tyria rather than the Mists. So ehh I dunno.

A few thoughts:

1) I don’t know if we have a set release cycle for raids yet. By this I mean something similar to what LS is getting, 2-3 month release cycle.

2) I know it seems like a lot has come out for raids, but I think that was in large part because the wings for Raid 1 were all pretty close to being done. The content drought definitely didn’t help matters either, but that, I think, has since been rectified.

3) Since Wing 3 was released, it had been approx. 9 months until the next Raid was released. In that time, 3 LS episodes (complete with their own maps and rewards), 2 festival events (I understand that they were rehashed, but they did have new rewards to go for), a few Current Events updates, 2 new fractals (yes, the assets in both were recycled content, but that shouldn’t take away from having something new to do), and some PVP seasons. That is a LOT of stuff.

4) I would go so far as to suggest giving them a couple of raid/raid wing releases. Simply so that we can attempt to discern what kind of cadence they are trying to maintain.

Fatalyz.7168:

Astralporing.1957:

Fatalyz.7168:

So, if someone doesn’t think training guilds should push new players towards meta builds, why don’t they join a training guild that doesn’t?

Because those are not succesful.
It’s not the guilds that push the players towards those builds. It’s the game itself that does.

If they are not successful, then they need to work on mechanics (depending on fight, some fights do have hard time limits, but those are generally pretty lenient on dps requirements to begin with).

Yes, Raids are easier with an optimal comp, but not impossible, you just may have to practice more. If you failed with a sub-optimal comp, it is more likely that mechanics were failed than anything else.

Technically true, but the right comp massively improves succes chances beyond the initial “learning the mechanics” phase. As such, checking builds is usually the first step to improving those chances. So, training guilds that are serious about training do that step at the very beginning.

Suboptimal comp attempts (the ones that have a chance of succeeding, at least) are usually something that happens only after the players already learned the fight enough to be succesful on dependable basis.

Training guilds that do not try to improve on players’ builds are also guilds that are not serious enough about succeeding, and are almost certain to be lax at everything else as well.

Crinn.7864:

Tell me, do you deliberately draw out mob fights? Or do you kill the mob asap and move on?

In dungeons, i represent the “kill everything that moves” school of thought. If i can choose, i almost never skip fights, even when it’s really easy to do and would be a significant reduction in run time.

Does that answer that question?

Yeah, I didn’t particularly look on how much time was in between to be fair. It might as well be that it has been a long time in between and it just feels like it was loads that came out for raids.

Though that might as well have to do with the weekly reset, some people needing some time to learn new encounters and such. It keeps people busy for longer, thus it feels like it’s more valuable for longer? If that makes any sense. In 4 weeks you’ve played more than enough of one Living world update whilst in that same time you basically only could have gotten the raid reward 4 times.

It just seems that some people look to raids as more content, thus I ad hoc concluded that living story maps just don’t have that same amount of replayability. I suppose a better thing might be for the living world team(s?) to look to longer term goals like raids has so that what they bring out lasts longer, provided it’s not straight out grind more.

Also looking to other things that are currently in raids, like permanent places within Tyria, exploring parts of the world map players never been before. It’s exciting, though the raid content might not be for everyone. Hence the suggestion of new “fractals” taking place on the world map as well rather than the Mists. It could technically use all the same systems, size and average length, tiers, agony, except the location.

Crinn.7864:

Vayne.8563:

Believe what you want, but it’s not a fact, it’s your belief. It took us many many weeks to do the escort, but we’ve beat it now a couple of times.

I’m not really looking forward to actual raid bosses with my guild.

When my guild started doing raids, “raid night” consisted of wiping on VG for three hours. Now we have the wings on farm mode.

Your guild is going through progression, you wipe until you don’t and then you put it on farm and move on to the next boss.

See that’s the thing. You may find it acceptable or fun to play for hours for no reward except getting a little better or a little further. I don’t.

Some of the people in my guild can only play for four hours a week. Their entire game time then would be not progressing at all for weeks and months. You think that’s okay? You think they’ll want to keep playing this game?

I have tons of stuff I actually WANT to do in this game. I don’t really think repeating the same thing over and over again just to get a bit better so I can finally beat it is fun, and it’s certainly not effective use of my time.

Put it another way. If I enjoy crossword puzzles and I get a hard one, that’s fine. I’ll bang my head against it because I enjoy it. It might take a long time, because I’m having fun.

I’m doing the same thing with raids….minus the fun.

Sure we beat the escort, but when we did, I didn’t feel this tremendous sense of elation. I felt this tremendous sense of relief. Finally it’s over.

And I’m going to have to do this how much to get to legendary armor, something I’d have been okay working on with any other content in the game?

Sorry, this doesn’t work for me.

Fatalyz.7168:

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

Except you’re getting a reward for that content that no one else is going to get, and you think that’s fine and dandy, even though you’re a minority. In Guild Wars 1 not everyone could do DOA to get tormented weapons, but they could buy what they needed from other players to get tormented weapons, without doing DOA. That’s how the game worked.

When the game started, you could buy legendaries, without doing anything but farming gold, or even taking out your credit card.

If that’s not a change of identity, I don’t know what is.

Just as an fyi Vayne, earning currency as you get further along in a raid encounter is not ‘no rewards’.

Provided you are raiding to Shard cap every week with due diligence, everyone raiding will get shards to purchase ascended gear of any stat they choose, at a much larger gold discount mind you.

And on the off-chance you do kill another raid boss just once, you unlock its equipment for purchase, the lovely unique skins and so forth.

Honestly if everyone is defending one thing, Raids, than yes I’d say GW2 has lost its identity. It’s become a huge grindfest, dungeons are pretty much dead most maps are now empty / full of botters, theres little to no help anywhere cause there are no rewards for doing anything besides fractals and raids. They need to focus on the whole game than just 2 parts that people are all over (Raids and WvW). I think they need to get back to creating Dungeons and tweaking them, making them worth while to play for people who arent hardcore enough / dont have the time to do raids. They should also focus on making the game fun, not whats best for loot. I wanted to play guild wars not a remake of Destiny.

I loved the game pre HoT, but now I can only tolerate playing it for about an hour a day cause everything I liked about it has changed to what I hate about MMOs

LTTP so sorry if I missed something relevant.

At this point their priorities are obviously Gem Store>Expansion(most likely)>Living World(S3, Current Events, New Zones)>Raids>Guild Halls>Fractals>WvW>QOL Improvements. Even sacrificing from other areas in favor of LW. They completely restructured their plans for Legendary Weapons and sacrificing Festival improvements in favor of Living World.

They are coming out with Living World update at a MUCH higher content-to-release time ratio than they have ever been.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Fatalyz.7168:

Hjorje.9453:

Crinn.7864:

Then ya’ll should have no problem with raids.

Raid wipes are going to be from mechanics, if you are failing dps checks you where probably having mechanics issues.

The dps checks are so small that I cannot fathom how you could possibly not meet them without failing mechanics first.

Lets look at the from a different angle. I raid outside of my guild. I have no problems with the raids, with rotations, or with mechanics. I consider myself a pretty decent player. But the player with in my guild have their own set of limitations that make the mechanics hard for them, or they are slow on skill usage which lowers the DPS. Raids require a different kind of coordination then fractals or dungeons do. I can get a group together of just my friends and knock out any dungeon path in 30min or less mostly less. Me and my friends can go into a fractal and knock those out, but when we start adding others to the group the times go up, not because they are bad players, they just have other limitations that slow things down.

Then those players are not the target audience for that content, and that is OK. Just because people that are not the target audience are not able to complete it, is not a reason to change the content to suit them.

And before anyone says that you aren’t asking to change the content, that you want to increase the accessibility, there are two scenarios for that to happen: 1) they create an infantile-like mode, but do not increase dev resources resulting in either poorer quality or increased time between releases, or 2) they increase raid dev resources by bringing in devs from other departments/areas, Raids are now able to get multi-layered content but content in other parts of the game now has reduced quality or increased time between releases. Neither of those situations is conducive to “adding onto”. You could say that there is a third option, hire more resources, and while I don’t see that happening, I’ve been wrong before.

I wonder how much of an issue it is if time between raids increase, to be honest. As long as they consider how much content they put out for everyone. Because for some reason I feel that the longevity of raids is much better, also due to goals like legendary armor and time gating rewards to once a week.

While playing the living story episodes, those seem to be play once and maybe some minor repetition in the zone, explored it and then pretty much done. It doesn’t have that same longevity perhaps? I feel many players come to Raids as the only other thing to come to they haven’t played through at least once, expecting just a good time and maybe some repeating it for shinies. But it obviously might not be their thing

I think dungeons and fractals and raids are all separate things, comparing them is alright, but they have very different target audiences. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit less focus on raids, and more on slightly more accessible group content that is challenging but not so challenging that you need to practice and practice. (I mean, it is a game, alot of players just want to play leisurely not practice) Not that I don’t think current raiders deserve their challenges or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the player base is still waiting for challenging content that is suited for them. (It might be tricky to determine what is challenging for a bigger audience, I suppose)

Going on a tangent here, but in a way I guess fractals is sort of nice with different challenge tiers in that way. Though I wouldn’t mind if fractals as “small instances in the mists” started existing more as “small instances in Tyria” As for most people that might make a more interesting story. It would be setting up fractal-like instances up as 4 difficulty tiered mini raids outside of the mists, which could actually work as an extension of the fractals themselves. As a complete out of the blue concept ofcourse and It would mean it is less tied to fractals which then would receive less updates tied to the fractal hub in the mists and more tangible in Tyria rather than the Mists. So ehh I dunno.

The LW episodes have repeatable content in the form of achievements.

Sykper.6583:

Just as an fyi Vayne, earning currency as you get further along in a raid encounter is not ‘no rewards’.

Provided you are raiding to Shard cap every week with due diligence, everyone raiding will get shards to purchase ascended gear of any stat they choose, at a much larger gold discount mind you.

And on the off-chance you do kill another raid boss just once, you unlock its equipment for purchase, the lovely unique skins and so forth.

After hours and hours and hours and hours of doing the escort, I still don’t have enough for a single piece of ascended armor. I could have build one out of oatmeal in this time. For all intents and purposes, it’s a very slow trickle of reward, while doing something I’m NOT ENJOYING.

Those are the key words. If I were enjoying it, the rewards would matter a lot less. To make the rewards worth it, you really do have to actually kill the bosses. Learning how to kill the bosses is NOT WORTH MY TIME.

I do want the rewards. I don’t want to do something I hate for hours on end.

Chun.5827:

Raids, represent the biggest change to the identity of Guild Wars franchise. In the 12 years I’ve played Guild Wars from the original Guild Wars Prophecies, I have never bothered posting on forums and even then, this is the only thread I’ve ever bothered to commented on.

Raids, represent a shift away from the “casual philosophy” that existed all the way back from Guild Wars Prophecies. All easy (Normal Mode, Open World) and elite PvE content (Slavers Exile, UW, FoW, Fractals, Dungeons), in both GW1 and GW2 followed the spirit this philosophy, until Raids were introduced.

It looks like you never played the elite areas in GW1 before they were nerfed to death with power creep. Especially UW was hard during prophecies. Same goes for Deep, Urgoz’s Warren and DoA when they were current content.

Legendary Grenth.3561:

Honestly if everyone is defending one thing, Raids, than yes I’d say GW2 has lost its identity. It’s become a huge grindfest, dungeons are pretty much dead most maps are now empty / full of botters, theres little to no help anywhere cause there are no rewards for doing anything besides fractals and raids. They need to focus on the whole game than just 2 parts that people are all over (Raids and WvW). I think they need to get back to creating Dungeons and tweaking them, making them worth while to play for people who arent hardcore enough / dont have the time to do raids. They should also focus on making the game fun, not whats best for loot. I wanted to play guild wars not a remake of Destiny.

I loved the game pre HoT, but now I can only tolerate playing it for about an hour a day cause everything I liked about it has changed to what I hate about MMOs.

The game is significantly less grindy than pre-HoT if you exclude some of the HoT cosmetics. Dungeons give more tokens and take less runs to get the skins, reduced grind. Most fractal drops can now be bought with currency, less grind you don’t rely on a random drop. Precursor collection allows you to get to them at your own speed without hoarding, less grindy per step. More methods for obsidian shards, less karma grinding. More methods to aquire ascended items, less grind for lower materials.

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

To the ops original question—the ONLY answer is
a resounding YES!

Sartharina.3542:

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

I disagree with this. Dungeons were meant to be challenging 5 man content and according to Anet they were replaced by Fractals not raids. Raids were an additional level of difficulty added.

Fractals have the advantage of not excluding people by having multiple difficulties. Dungeons have story mode, which is easier and explorable modes.

Raids have one difficulty. That’s it.

And raids have legendary armor. Dungeons had only skins.

Fractals are the true spiritual successor to dungeons, and raids were never mentioned by Anet at all, until the expansion.

Vayne.8563:

Sartharina.3542:

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

I disagree with this. Dungeons were meant to be challenging 5 man content and according to Anet they were replaced by Fractals not raids. Raids were an additional level of difficulty added.

Fractals have the advantage of not excluding people by having multiple difficulties. Dungeons have story mode, which is easier and explorable modes.

Raids have one difficulty. That’s it.

And raids have legendary armor. Dungeons had only skins.

Fractals are the true spiritual successor to dungeons, and raids were never mentioned by Anet at all, until the expansion.

Fractals were not the spiritual successor to dungeons – they all had their rewards clumped together, had multiple difficulty tiers per mini-dungeon (Every core dungeon has one difficult level for the content. Story mode is NOT ‘easy mode’ for Explorable, and each Path has its own bosses and mechanics). Also, fractals inhabit no space in the world, and while they have some lore tidbits, they’re explicitly stripped from the world itself. Individual dungeons are also a component of legendary weapons.

Raids have space in the world and current events, like dungeons, and, like dungeons, provide unique weapon and armor skins of the highest tier available when they were released, themed to the content. I could see an argument that Raid wings could have been closer to the Dungeon Paths, with all wings offering the same reward, but they went with a more linear approach to the story, instead of “Do One Thing One of Three Ways.”

Fractals are a treadmill. Raids are a challenge.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Sartharina.3542:

Raids are what Dungeons wanted to be at launch. The raids are our new dungeons. Unfortunately, dungeons weren’t what dungeons were supposed to be at launch, and aren’t what they’re really supposed to be now. It’s part of why they’ve been abandoned.

I disagree with this. Dungeons were meant to be challenging 5 man content and according to Anet they were replaced by Fractals not raids. Raids were an additional level of difficulty added.

Fractals have the advantage of not excluding people by having multiple difficulties. Dungeons have story mode, which is easier and explorable modes.

Raids have one difficulty. That’s it.

And raids have legendary armor. Dungeons had only skins.

Fractals are the true spiritual successor to dungeons, and raids were never mentioned by Anet at all, until the expansion.

Fractals were not the spiritual successor to dungeons – they all had their rewards clumped together, had multiple difficulty tiers per mini-dungeon (Every core dungeon has one difficult level for the content. Story mode is NOT ‘easy mode’ for Explorable, and each Path has its own bosses and mechanics). Also, fractals inhabit no space in the world, and while they have some lore tidbits, they’re explicitly stripped from the world itself. Individual dungeons are also a component of legendary weapons.

Raids have space in the world and current events, like dungeons, and, like dungeons, provide unique weapon and armor skins of the highest tier available when they were released, themed to the content. I could see an argument that Raid wings could have been closer to the Dungeon Paths, with all wings offering the same reward, but they went with a more linear approach to the story, instead of “Do One Thing One of Three Ways.”

Fractals are a treadmill. Raids are a challenge.

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

While they replaced dungeons as the challenging content, they didn’t carry the spirit of dungeons. Raids did.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

While they replaced dungeons as the challenging content, they didn’t carry the spirit of dungeons. Raids did.

Except they didn’t. Dungeons had multiple paths, raids don’t. You could do story mode and see at least the inside the dungeon, even if you didn’t see every boss. Not true for raids.

Vayne.8563:

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

While they replaced dungeons as the challenging content, they didn’t carry the spirit of dungeons. Raids did.

Except they didn’t. Dungeons had multiple paths, raids don’t. You could do story mode and see at least the inside the dungeon, even if you didn’t see every boss. Not true for raids.

Very much this.

A range of experiences within the game mode – a way for more people to enjoy the content, and for the content to link with the narrative/experience/feel of the rest of the game — that is the piece missing from raids.

Challenging content should be a part of the game – but not when it serves to exclude people from the experience/story/etc based on how they choose to build and play their character.

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model (something players have been asking for since ANet first used the word raid, btw).

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

And for the record, they don’t NEED to do anything.

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

Blaeys.3102:

Challenging content should be a part of the game – but not when it serves to exclude people from the experience/story/etc based on how they choose to build and play their character.

1) Challenging content should exclude people.

2) Current Challenging content in this game does not exclude people based on they choose to build and play their character. Other players and their own willingness to work at getting better at the content excludes them.

Ticky.5831:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

I could see doing it like a reverse challenge mote – pick the story only mode and it switches to the easy mode no loot version.

Ticky.5831:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

The problem is that while it is easy to say that adding an easy mode should be trivial. We don’t know the extent of the work that would be required. I think if it was easy, it would have been something either already done, if it was something that they wanted to do.

So with that, two possibilities left:
1) It isn’t as easy as some are suggesting to add an easier mode.
2) Anet just doesn’t want Raids to be associated with easy content. (which is fine because there are plenty of people who agree with this stance).

Moonyeti.3296:

Ticky.5831:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

I could see doing it like a reverse challenge mote – pick the story only mode and it switches to the easy mode no loot version.

Or, you go in, and that is the “easy” version, and you active the challenge mote if you want more challenge. One argument that I have with that, is that they tried it with the newest raid wing, and I think it is arguable that the quality slipped from the first raid and it’s 3 wings.

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

They can likely do both without expending a single additional resource – a point that has been brought up before.

Simply shift the resources that went into the challenge motes from the last raid wing (that are pretty much universally disliked anyway) into a story mode or mote system. Make the harder version the proper raid experience and use the mote system/resources to implement this greater accessibility.

Of course, Im speculating that the resources spent would be roughly the same, but I think that is justified by common sense.

Blaeys.3102:

Vayne.8563:

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that fractals replaced dungeons as challenging five man content. Not like this is something I’ve made up.

While they replaced dungeons as the challenging content, they didn’t carry the spirit of dungeons. Raids did.

Except they didn’t. Dungeons had multiple paths, raids don’t. You could do story mode and see at least the inside the dungeon, even if you didn’t see every boss. Not true for raids.

Challenging content should be a part of the game – but not when it serves to exclude people from the experience/story/etc based on how they choose to build and play their character.

Ok, I really can’t agree with this line of thinking. GW2 has the most elastic character build system I’ve ever seen. In fact, it’s far more elastic than it was at launch.

At launch there was respeccing for trait lines; you unlocked your skills non-linearly. Now it’s just swap out your traits and skills. Maybe have an extra gear set.

With that in place, I see absolutely no reason why it should be any issue whatsoever to accommodate a raid group.

And besides, “dungeons” had the same “problem” with people demanding the speed run meta. That was before raids, that was before damage meters.

I’d honestly recommend watching this WP video. He’s talking about how damage meters actually increased build variety. The reason being, even without the empirical data from DPS meter figures, people were still running metas off word-of-mouth. He actually found that running a non-meta build (power engi) performs adequately, even exceeding practical performance of other players running the meta engi due to less demanding gameplay, allowing people to focus on the mechanics. And he knows what he’s talking about, being under demands from his viewership to play in ways he wouldn’t be inclined to play normally.

Blaeys.3102:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

They can likely do both without expending a single additional resource – a point that has been brought up before.

Simply shift the resources that went into the challenge motes from the last raid wing (that are pretty much universally disliked anyway) into a story mode or mote system. Make the harder version the proper raid experience and use the mote system/resources to implement this greater accessibility.

Of course, Im speculating that the resources spent would be roughly the same, but I think that is justified by common sense.

I think that it is safe to say that there were minimal resources put into the challenge motes, and I think it is better for those resources to be spent on making the proper challenge the best experience that they can.

It also took 9 months for them to deliver that second raid wing with the challenge moltes, I’m pretty sure that we don’t want them taking that long between future releases or even longer.

maddoctor.2738:

SkyShroud.2865:

Valid comparison when your usage of terminologies are questionable? Fine, believe what you want to believe.

A “Raid” or “content to attract Raiders” needs to have some very specific aspects. Team work, builds, encounters that make you think, proper team composition and balance. This is the meal that Raiders want, this is what makes Raids, Raids.

There was explicit mention that dungeons would work like GW1 elite instances, which combined most of the above features. There was also stated that their dungeons would appeal to Raiders, which means they would include the above features, otherwise they wouldn’t appeal to Raiders. After all, how can something that doesn’t provide what Raids do, appeal to a Raider? It doesn’t make sense otherwise.

A Raider wants to eat meat, and “meat” is the above aspects that were expected to be in dungeons. Dungeons were supposed to be meat in order to appeal to those who love eating meat.

But in the end, none of the above aspects could be found in dungeons. They were advertised as meat but in the end we found out it was soup. They spiced it up, they used new recipes, but in the end it was still soup. And by offering soup in your restaurant you can’t appeal to someone who wants to eat meat.

Now they added meat, as advertised so many ago to be on their menu, to actually and truthfully this time appeal to that crowd. Will it work? Who knows, maybe the GW2 raids will also end up being well disguised soup in the end. Time will tell

What advertised to you and to me seems very different. What I saw gw2 advertise as is a casual game targeting casual mainstream players. With that in mind, whatever gw2 wrote later, I basically see them all as marketing gimmick with a exaggerations here and there.

Regardless, dungeons were slightly harder at launch but a lot of balancing were made and our general DPS have been increased over the years. Now, dungeon is just childplay. Same thing can happen to raid as gw2 has never been very consistent in their balance approach and power creeping is very real in gw2. When our overall dps increase, raid too will get easier.

Moonyeti.3296:

Ticky.5831:

Fatalyz.7168:

Blaeys.3102:

There is room for both – they just need to finally realize this and implement a story mode into the raid model.

How would they go about accomplishing both, hire more people, take more time in between content releases, lower the quality of what is being delivered, or deprecate more content to free up resources?

I’m honestly more inclined to agree with the “raids are ok” attitude; but I honestly think it would be a trivial amount of effort to implement an easy mode.

Just nerf the easy mode into oblivion and don’t give rewards for it. If all the players want is to see the story, gameplay quality should be trivial. They are just going to be playing it once and then be done with it.

I could see doing it like a reverse challenge mote – pick the story only mode and it switches to the easy mode no loot version.

Yeah, that’s my idea entirely.